Ok. It's getting really annoying. I was playing the Chinese and I just got defeated by a single half-track.
It didn't stop anywhere long enough to be hit by an arty strike, so I had to retreat.

In Close Combat a half-track could be damaged with rifle/MG fire and could be destroyed with grenades. Here, light armoured vehicles are indestructible for anything that isn't a dedicated AT weapon/Artillery.

You just always have to have an ATR in the early war games, and it doesn't hurt to mod it so you can have one in late war games as well. I have it available for my Russians until 1945. It works well as a manually fired (by order) anti-infantry weapon if there's no armor to shoot at.

Knut wrote:You just always have to have an ATR in the early war games, and it doesn't hurt to mod it so you can have one in late war games as well. I have it available for my Russians until 1945. It works well as a manually fired (by order) anti-infantry weapon if there's no armor to shoot at.

This was discussed way back when someone said there ought to be dedicated snipers. I tested using AT rifles for that, and found that they had no effect on soldiers.

In the Avalon Hill/Multi-Man Publishing classic, Squad Leader, infantry could close combat armored vehicles with grenades and small arms. Agreed, Firefight should have something similar for Regular and Elite troops; Raw troops would indeed panic and flee from AFVs.

Addendum to the above: Raw troops without anti-tank weapons would flee from AFVs. As a real-life example, Israel found in 1948, 1956, and 1967 that charging Arab troops with tanks would cause the Arab soldiers to break and run. In 1973, however, charging Israeli tanks suffered heavy casualties at the hands of Egyptian soldiers who were well-armed with anti-tank weapons (RPGs and ATGMs).

In World War II, poorly-trained and poorly-equipped soldiers from the lesser powers broke and ran when faced with tanks at close range. It came as a shock to the larger powers when they faced infantry that stood its ground. The Soviets lost large numbers of tanks to Finns armed with improvised anti-tank weapons. British troops at Dunkirk held German panzers at bay with hand grenades in close combat. Both Warsaw uprisings saw highly-motivated citizen militias use Molotov cocktails to good effect. Even small arms could be used in close combat against tanks: rifle muzzles shoved into open-air vision slits can and did kill several tank crews, especially in the urban combats exemplified by Stalingrad and Budapest.

So yes, the game should reflect that Regular and Elite troops without anti-tank weapons may attempt to use hand grenades and personal weapons to take out an enemy armored vehicle in close combat. However, the wise commander equips his/her forces in accordance with the threat and the mission.